family in straitened circumstances, but the youth by dint of self-perseverance took the course at Dartmouth college, and graduated with full honors. For a time he essayed teaching, then went to Washington, D. C., and read law with Wiam Wirt, supporting himself meanwhile by teaching a classical school.

Previous to this, however, he had spent several years with his uncle, Bishop Philander Chase, in Ohio, part of the time at Worthington and part of the time at Cincinnati, returning from the latter place to Dartmouth, where he graduated in 1826. Four years later he came to the bar in Washington, going thence to Cincinnati, O., where he located in 1830.

Finding but little business, says Howe, the historian, he occupied about two years of his leisure in compiling the statutes of Ohio, preceded by an outline history of the state. The work, known as "Chase Statutes," which proved of great service to the profession, was regarded of extraordinary merit. From his Puritan training he had early learned to view all questions in their moral aspects, and so from the very beginning of his career he was the friend of the slave, being when in Washington active in procuring signatures to a petition to congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

In politics he did not then identify himself with either of the parties. When in 1836 a mob destroyed The Philanthropist, the anti-slavery newspaper, he was engaged by Mr. Birney, the editor, to bring the offenders to justice. About this time miscreants in and about Cincinnati not only made it a business to hunt and capture runaway slaves for the sake of reward, but to kidnap the free blacks, carry them across the Ohio and sell them into slavery. In 1837, in what was known as the Matilda case, where a master brought a slave girl to the city and afterwards endeavored to take her back into slavery, Mr. Chase appeared in her behalf, as he frequently did in similar cases without expectation of pecuniary reward. After the case had been closed a gentleman of note who was present said: "There goes a promising young lawyer who has ruined himself," he feeling how unpopular in those days was the defense of the enslaved and defenseless. None but a man of the highest moral courage and humanity would have been willing to endure the obloquy. Governor Hoadly said of him:

"What helped him-yes, what made him, was this. He walked with God. The predominant element of his life, that which gave tone and color to his thoughts and determined the direction and color of all he did, was his striving after righteousness . Behind the dusky face of every black

man he saw is Savior, the divine man also scourged, a'so in prison, at last crucified. This is what made him what he was. To this habit of referring to divine guidance every act of his life we owe the closing words of the Proclamation of Emancipation, which Mr. Lincoln added from Mr. Chase's pen as follows: 'And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the favorable judgment of all mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.' He had dainty tastes, disliked the unclean in word or person; but he put his

pleasure under his feet when duty led him to the rescue of the lowly. He had a large frame and mighty passions, but they were under absolute control."

In 1868, when he was spoken of as the Democratic candidate for the presidency, he wrote as follows to Horatio Seymour, the chairman of the national convention, in New York:

"For more than a quarter of a century I have been in my political views and sentiments a Democrat, and still think that upon questions of finance, commerce and administration generally the old Democratic principles afford the best guidance. What separated me in former times from both parties was the depth and positiveness of my conviction upon the slavery question. In 1849 I was elected to the senate by the united votes of the old-line Democrats and independent Democrats, and subsequently made earnest efforts to bring about a union of all Democrats on the ground of the limitation of slavery to the states in which it then existed, and nonintervention in those states by act of congress. Had that union been effected, it is my firm belief that the country would have escaped the late civil war and all its evils."

As a public speaker Mr. Chase was not eloquent. His speech was at times labored and hard, but he was impressive from his earnestness and the weight of his thought. He died in the city of New York on the 7th of May, 1873, of paralysis, having married three times and leaving six children. On the 22d of February, 1849, Mr. Chase was elected to the United States senate as the successor of William Allen, over Thomas Ewing, by a combination between the Democrats and two Free Soilers, who held the balance of power, after four exciting ballots in the joint convention of the two houses. He was re-elected in 1860, but resigned on the 10th of March, 1861, to become secretary of the treasury under President Lincoln, and was succeeded by John Sherman of Richland county in the senate.

He had previously been elected governor of Ohio, in 1855, defeating William Medill by a vote of 146,770 to 131,019, and re-elected in 1857 over Henry B. Payne by the close vote of 160.568 to 159,065. In 1860 he was a candidate for the presidential nomination before the national convention of the Republican party at Chicago. In recognition of his great ability President Lincoln made him his secretary of the treasury, and his financial sagacity and fiscal system, primarily based upon the issue of treasury notes to meet the exigency that arose, successfully tided the Union over the financial breakers which threatened to destroy it. He fully understood the great resources of the republic and fearlessly called them into action to back up the armed forces in the field. Whitelaw Ried said of his great work in this regard:

"Ohio may be indulged, even here in the pardonable pride of an allusion to the part that in this phase of the war as well as in the others 'she led throughout the war. To take a bankrupt treasury, sustain the credit of the government, feed, equip, arm and pay all the expenses of a war of four years -this was the work accomplished by Salmon P. Chase."

On June 30, 1864, Mr. Chase resigned his position as secretary of the

treasury, was succeeded by William P. Fessenden of Maine, and on the nomination of Lincoln, was confirmed on the 5th of December, 1864, chief justice of the United States, an office he filled until his decease. He presided at the impeachment trial of President Johnson, in 1868.

He presided over the impeachment trial with judicial impartiality, but the radical leaders of his party charged him with being partial to the accused, and this wholly estranged him from the party which he had helped to organize and with which he had acted for so many years.

He was a member of the peace commission in 1861.

BENJAMIN F. WADE OF ASHTABULA COUNTY.

Born in Feeding Hills parish, Mass., Oct. 27, 1800. Died in Jefferson, Ashtabula county, O., March 2, 1878. He was a state senator, a United States

senator, president pro tem. of that

body and ex officio vice president of the United States, with only the judgment of the high court of impeachment standing between him and the presidency in 1868, with that decision hanging tremblingly in the balance.

Wade's parents were in miserable circumstances, and his opportunities for securing any sort of an education were of the most limited character. For some years he supported himself by doing farm work in the neighborhood of his home, and then performed common labor on the Erie canal, because it brought him grea eremunera ion. At the beginning of the year 1821 he removed to Northeastern Ohio, because opp.tunities for advancement were greater there than in the East.

While engaged in the hardest of manuai iabor during the day, he spent his nights and holidays reading and studying the books which he was able to purchase with his scanty earnings. When he came to man's estate he had not only secured for himself a

thoroughly practical education, but was well versed in history, science, philosophy and literature. He was able to appropriate for his own use the best thoughts and the highest ideals of past generations, without the intervention of schools, tutors and professors.

A few years later he began reading law, finishing his studies with Joshua R. Giddings, with whom he entered into partnership in 1828, upon his admission to the bar. Nominally Mr. Wade was a Whig in politics, but his adhesion to that party was rather perfunctory than otherwise. Intense in his opposition to slavery, he imbibed all the principles of the Abolitionises, and was an aggressive evangel of the liberation of the black race on American soil, and never paltered with any form of compromise. Wade

and Giddings were not only part ers in the practice of the law, but in politics as well, and in the dissemination of the gospel of anti-slavery.

Aside from some unimportant local positions, Wade entered political and official life as a state senator, having been sent to that body in 1827 to represent Ashtabula and Geauga counties in the Thirty-sixth general assembly, serving in the same capacity in the Thirty-seventh. In 1842 he was again elected to the senate of the Forty-first general assembly, representing Ashtabula and Lake counties.

In 1851 he was elected to the United States senate over Henry B. Payne of Cuyahoga county, after the most exciting senatorial contest during the century. The legislature was almost evenly divided, with the chances rather in favor of Democratic success. Thirty-seven ballots were taken. The balloting opened on the 30th of January, 1851, with Henry B. Payne, Democrat, and Hiram Griswold, Whig, as the respective candidates, and 102 votes in the joint convention. Payne's highest vote was 44 and Griswold's 48, with enough blank and scattering votes to have elected either.

On the ninth ballot the joint convention dissolved and did not reconvene until the 13th of March, and continued during the 14th and 15th. The highest number of votes cast during these sessions was 94, eight Democrats absenting themselves. On the seventeenth ballot the Whigs deserted Griswold, whose election was clearly an impossibility, and gave their support to Thomas Ewing. On the twentieth ballot they went to Thomas Corwin. On the twenty-fourth, twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh and twentyeighth, the bulk of the Whig vote was cast for Wade, but he lacked half a score of votes of being successful. On the twenty-ninth and thirtieth the Whig vote was cast for Sherlock J. Andrews, and then changed to Ebenezer Lane, and on the thirty-fifth began to concentrate on Wade for a second time, and on the thirty-seventh he was elected receiving 44 votes to 34 for Payne and 7 blanks, in a total vote of 85, or 17 less than the full joint convention.

During all the ballots the bulk of the Democratic vote was cast for Mr. Payne, who started with 40 votes in a convention of 102 and ended with 34 in one of 85. The Whig vote on the first ballot was 46, or two more than the vote by which Wade was finally elected. There was an average of eight blank votes during the balloting opposed to Wade or any Whig candidate, which on numerous occasions would have elected Payne had they been cast for him.

Mr. Wade was re-elected on the 28th of February, 1856, and again on the 22d of February, 1862, Senator Wade being the second senator from Ohio to secure a third election. During his last term in the senate Mr Wade was chosen president pro tempore of that body, and upon the death of President Lincoln in 1865 became acting vice president of the United States.

When impeachment proceedings were instituted against President